I have synthesized various polymers with both positive and negative charges. I would like to find out the interaction among the polymer chains in solution. Can anyone tell how to find out the interaction among them?
if you want to see the interactions between your polymers, take a SEM or TEM of the mixture to visualise . In normal cases it will form supramolecular architechtures .
At some point, 1H-NMR relaxometry might provide some information as it can show the dependency of the water molecule mobility (e. g. rotational movability) on the polymer concentrations and their interactions between each other and its environment.
Thank you so much for all your valuable suggestions. But i want to find intramolecular interactions (intra-chain interactions) in the polymer solution. Interactions can either vanderwaal, electrostatic or hydrophobic interaction.
As your polymers consists of both the charges. Preferably, electrostatic interaction will take place beside others. your polymers should form some supramolecular assembly, which you can study with help of electron microscopy (SEM, TEM). To check electrostatic interactions, you can observe the effect of ionic strength on the zeta potential of your polymers.
actually you have to find out what is the interaction happening by using the help of some microscopy like TEM and SEM. then from the structure you have to conclude what is the interaction happening..
The intramolecular interactions will depend on polymer concentration and solvent composition. You could do measurements of viscosity as function of polymer concentration. To get more detailed insight about contributions to the interactions you could vary electrolyte content to modify electrostatic interactions and you can change refractive index by solvent composition or cosolute to modify contribution of van der Waals forces (when refractive index is matched van der Waals forces are zero!).
You may want to consider some of the treatments employed in ionomer research. Addition of salts (LiCl, etc) have been used in solution characterizations/properties (viscosity and gpc studies) and changing solvent polarity.
Study the binding of fluorescent dyes using competition with non fluorescent molecules, either hydrophobic or ionic. Can you degrade your polymer? Partial degradation will give you island which are protected by internal interactions. Isolate and identify the residues. Can you unfold your polymer? Folding studies in the presence of hydrophobic or charged small molecules are interesting. Inclusion of small molecules with hydrophobic or polar nature.
Dr. Holler's suggestion is an excellent one. The key step is to strategically attach the two components necessary for fluorescence throughout the polymer of interest, and then observe the kinetics of the development of fluorescence. This should be done with the least functional version of the polymer of interest.
Then one could systematically add back in various other functionalities and then observe changes in the development of fluorescence. This should be done in conjunction with DSC measurements of Tg (and any other transitions that may exist), because if one passes inadvertently through a transition, the kinetics will be materially affected.
This will be helped considerably if one approaches this as an experimental discovery of phase behavior of the polymer(s) of interest as a function of whatever functionality type, level, and cross-interaction one is interested in. This can best be done graphically -- see below for some references.
But all this will be controlled by the rate of intermixing of components, which is far from a trivial matter. It turns out that the more functionality you add, the more difficult the micro-morphology will become, and the longer the system will take to achieve compositional equilibrium. In fact, it is common to obtain systems that seem to never reach equilibrium -- see following for an explanation.
See the monograph published in 1967 by the American Chemical Society (Washington, D.C.) Ordered Fluids and Liquid Crystals: Advances in Chemistry Series No. 63. This introduces the concept of complex phases in amphiphilic materials, and the need to follow particular pathways in moving through compositional space. As one crosses phase boundaries, viscosity typically goes through a maximum, severely retarding progress towards the new equilibrium composition. In fact, it can "permanently" retard such mixing, at least within the time-of-patience of the experimenter.
One example of this can be found in "Control of Foaming in Water-Borne Polymers," by Kuschnir, Eley, and Floyd, Journal of Coatings Technology, January, 1987, Vol 59, No. 744; pp. 75-87. Other worthwhile references are contained at the end of that paper.
Measure the structure of each individual polymer and any two together by Atomic Force Microscopy(AFM). Use provided software to measure the length and with of the chains. Differences in these parameters and resulting images will provide information concerning interactions. Also measure each polymer and combinations by HPSEC with online refractive index and ultraviolet detection, light scattering and viscosity. Differences in chromatograms and molar mass distributions will provide quantitative information on whether or not interactions are occurring as will AFM measurements.
There are plenty of physicochemical methods that could be used to study interactions of polymers in solutions, e.g. dynamic light scattering to look at changes in size caused by interactions, or isothermal titration calorimetry to study thermodynamic parameters of interactions